(KNOX) – Beneath the relatively calm waters of a state tournament, an undertow is brewing in the flow of high school hockey in North Dakota.
Longstanding frustrations with programs at different levels of development while maintaining a limited game schedule are reportedly being pushed to, perhaps, a final breaking point that could involve huge opportunities for the sport, but could also derail the approach some communities have to the game.
In typical high school sports fashion, the conversations started with whispers around a dozen rinks. But, with dominoes at the junior gold level seemingly about to tumble, those whispers are now morphing to fully audible voices as teams plan for their future.
Not much is certain, but one concept rises to the top: limited games and a host of new teams in one division may force more players to leave North Dakota high school hockey, and it’s a bridge too far for many in the top programs in the state.
The problem
Twenty-one games and 20 teams.
For the Grand Forks schools, an east region with 10 teams means nine opponents. Since the region expanded to 10 teams, with the entry of May-Port Area to Class A hockey, Central and Red River have not had to schedule the Patriots in the regular season. May-Port Area has played an independent schedule and automatically been assigned the tenth seed into the post-season tournament.
With the eight remaining opponents, the necessity of playing each twice took up 16 of the allotted 21 games. East Grand Forks appearing on the schedule twice left three available non-league games.
That number is far from satisfactory for teams that are a stone’s throw from highly competitive Minnesota programs like Warroad, Moorhead, Bemidji, Thief River Falls, more if a team is willing to travel.
The arrangement is changing, and in a way that is tenuous for the region’s top-end teams to plan for: May-Port wants in for points in the league.
Starting next year, each team must play the Patriots at least once for six league points, and can opt for twice for three apiece, which is the current league standard. A team may also play May-Port with their junior varsity, but the games count for the league points in that scenario.
That scenario leaves a coach with a big decision to make: either commit your varsity to a game with May-Port, meaning you sacrifice a non-conference game, or risk six points on a game involving your JV against a program that won it’s play-in game in 2025, advancing to the full East Region tournament.
May-Port is a member of the east region by North Dakota High School Activities Association standards, and are entitled to play for league points. To date, they have chosen not to.
So, why the change now?
Because the dominoes are threatening to fall for May-Port Area, and, as dominoes always do, they have a singular starting point.
Watford City
The Wolves may want in. They may want in next year. The girls may want in next year, and the boys may want in in two years.
Which is it? As comedian Nate Bargatze might say while playing General George Washington being asked how many yards are in a mile: nobody knows.
Someone does, but finding the answer is elusive. One report is Watford City is on a master schedule for the west region for boys and girls next year. Another report is that the scheduling was preliminary, and the fuel behind the Wolves’ jump, the parents, are now “crunching numbers” after discovering the move to high school hockey is not as simple as they originally thought.
Whatever their intentions are, the possibility of their move to high school hockey has destabilized both the junior gold and high school organizations in the state.
May-Port Area, playing an independent schedule, was guaranteed zero games. Watford City’s junior gold was a nice place to find them. Should they move to varsity hockey, a less competitive west region might absorb them as a full member, limiting what Watford City could schedule as non-conference games.
The loss of Watford City, along with the loss of a Minnesota tournament, left May-Port Area in a tough spot. A hockey team needs players, ice, and a schedule. The Patriots control two of those three ingredients.
The east region gives them some control over the third.
Will Watford City move? One west region athletic director, while attending the state tournament in Fargo, said he thought they would. Others seem to form their thoughts around an assumption that, soon, the Wolves will be a varsity hockey team at the high school level, and are making plans for that reality.
Which leads to the next domino.
Junior Gold
North Dakota has seven Junior Gold teams, including Watford City. The loss of one may spell the loss of close to all.
Junior Gold has hit a bit of a recession. Fargo has just one team. Minot, after a gutting of players to the juniors for the current season, has no Junior Gold team and has had to postpone the planned split of Minot High and Minot North. The two schools currently play high school hockey as Minot United.
Grand Forks, Northwood, Divide County, Richland, MT, and Langdon join Fargo and Watford City to fill out a seven-team league.
The word of Watford City’s pending departure has led to several conversations around the state.
Ethen Askvig, the Athletic Director of Langdon Public Schools, says the people around the Langdon Blades Junior Gold club have enquired of him about the possibility of joining the high school ranks, though he stresses no votes have been taken, and no formal conversations have been had.
However, the conversation was strong enough to warrant a call to NDHSAA Executive Secretary Matt Fetsch.
“I called Matt to find out what would be involved in the process,” Askvig said Friday morning. “I don’t know if the district would be in a position to take on high school hockey if it wasn’t fully funded by someone else, but we want to do what’s best to offer opportunities for the kids.”
Askvig added that the district has recently had to eliminate elementary school athletics programs to add money to a budget of deferred maintenance for buildings, and the funds for high school hockey would have to come from elsewhere.
As difficult as that sounds, it’s the program that May-Port area operates under. The Ice Dawgs program funds high school hockey, and the school district operates as the conduit between the Ice Dawgs and the NDHSAA.
Askvig says that, without Watford City to hold Junior Gold together in the west, the prevailing thought is that Divide County and Richland, MT may not stay in North Dakota for a six-team league. That would leave a junior gold program looking for a home, and the high school level would provide the answer.
But a new competitor would require more games, and the NDHSAA has been stuck on 21 games per team for a very long time, a point that frustrates coaches. Their premise is that every game burned on a new or struggling program is one more reason for a high-end player to leave his high school team and head to the next level early.
One former high school coach sums it up with a statement he made to the NDHSAA during his coaching career.
“Football gets nine games, half of an NFL schedule. Give me half of an NHL schedule, and we will be fine,” was the statement. That policy would nearly double the number of games a team could play.
But any exception made for hockey would come with a similar complaint from North Dakota basketball coaches, also limited on the number of games they can play. The disconnect seems to be a lack of understanding between the two groups of coaches. Basketball players rarely leave for “junior basketball” while hockey players leave on a regular basis, with high school coaches annually trying to hold their teams together in the off-season.
The dominoes, however, hit an interesting upside as they fall.
Twenty-four teams
The magic number of twenty-four teams is the first threshold North Dakota high school hockey must meet to be eligible for two divisions of hockey.
Two divisions would solve a lot of problems without altering the 21-game cap. First, basketball has three divisions, and basketball-centric administrators should not have an issue with hockey having two. Second, with a division of 10 or 12 teams, a number of available games for non-conference competition would become available for scheduling.
There’s a catch, however.
In the late 2000’s, the NDHSAA Board of Directors moved the enrollment threshold of high school basketball classes, under the two-division system, from 325 to 400 on request of Valley City, who was constantly just above the 325 level but struggling to compete in basketball and volleyball in the Eastern Dakota Conference.
Class B teams responded with a knee-jerk motion to strip the Board of Directors of the ability to determine the enrollment cutoff if a sport has only two divisions, adding a bylaw to the NDHSAA constitution that required 325 to be the number if only two divisions exist.
Based on current enrollment numbers and co-ops counting one-for-one in sports without an exemption, it is unlikely there is a single hockey team in North Dakota with a high school enrollment of less than 325. Even May-Port Area is a co-op of May-Port-CG, Hillsboro, Central Valley, Thompson, Hatton, and Northwood.
Two classes fixes nothing without changing a bylaw that has been largely ineffective in addressing any challenges in high school athletics since it’s passage. The emotional response by the body has led to Central Cass being on the verge of joining the EDC for sports while Valley City is now Class B by enrollment, just 15 years after the action by NDHSAA members. North Dakota is currently in it’s second year of three divisions of basketball, and in it’s first year of three divisions of volleyball.
High school hockey coaches would need to fight a battle to either eliminate the bylaw or add an amendment that shields hockey from the requirement if two fully competitive divisions of hockey are to be found. The battle may not be as uphill as needed, as, based on the current conversations suggest, hockey would have several small-school allies around the state.
During the East Region hockey tournament, NDHSAA Executive Secretary Matt Fetsch discussed the needs to find two divisions of competitive hockey. In the past, conversations of two divisions of North Dakota hockey have closed quickly, without much of a nod to the possibility existing.
That seems to have changed in a palpable way.
Timeline
Regional meetings of coaches have already occurred. Saturday will bring another meeting of hockey coaches in Fargo during the state tournament. Those meetings have not always been matter-of-fact. Teams moving in and out of high school hockey have led to strong emotions, and stronger opinions.
It seems that, this year, more and more conversations are leading to one of two conclusions, more games or two classes, needing to be in the very near future, not a distant goal.
Teams have until September 1st to petition into high school hockey, while schedules for 2026-27 have largely been completed. Should those intentions by schools be brought forward later in the process, the news would likely move over the summer or early fall.
Events that happen in the current timeframe of NDHSAA athletics are different than the actions of a decade or two ago. Before, the league was led by stalwart personalities that had little appetite for change. Basketball and volleyball realignment have steered the league in very different directions quickly. The time may be ripe for big changes to high school hockey.
FOLLOW US FOR INSTANT UPDATES!
